Bottom line: It’s all going to come down to turnout. Will young voters buck historic midterm trends and show up for Prop 19? As Jon Walker noted, among those who have already sent in their ballots, Prop 19 is narrowly losing. But it leads among those who plan to vote and have not done so. If there was ever a measure in need of a crack turnout operation, this is it. Unfortunately, there never really was one assembled due to lack of resources.

The fate of Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in California, is still very much up in the air. Depending on which most recent polls you look at, the measure is either winning by a few points or losing by a few points. Looking into the crosstabs of the polling on this proposition, it is clear that the success or failure of Prop 19 rides on the ability of its supporters to get out the vote.

With Proposition 19, the initiative to legalize and regulate marijuana, on the California ballot, the big political question is: can the initiative be a driver of voter turnout ? This is not only important for the success or failure of the ballot measure, but could potentially affect both the highly contested California governor and Senate races. There is evidence from past elections that marijuana reform can be what gets voters to the polls.

Reid could win the race if only he could somehow get the Democratic-leaning voters to turn out. That is not going to be easy. With massively high unemployment, the electorate is unhappy with the job Reid has done. There is also the problem of the large, traditionally Democratic-leaning Hispanic community being upset about Democrats’ failure to deliver on their promise to deal with immigration reform. If Reid does end up winning this race, it will probably have a fair amount to do with a very well executed GOTV operation.

It appears that “undecided” voters this year are primarily a group of people who really dislike both parties and the candidates put forth this election.

According to a new Pew Research poll (PDF) of registered voters in the upcoming congressional election, 45 percent are leaning Democratic while 44 percent are leaning Republican. This does not bode well for Democrats, since they need to be have a significant lead in the generic ballot if they hope to hold onto their large majorities in the House and Senate. At the same time, these numbers don’t point to a massive Republican wave. By comparison, at about this same time in 2006, Democrats led Republicans 50 percent to 39 percent.